


in your own puddle

by curtailed



Series: Ancestral Awakenings [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 12:50:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20835758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curtailed/pseuds/curtailed
Summary: A modern-day reenactment of the original four.





	in your own puddle

If they didn't code him to breathe, he thought, then he wouldn't have -- he would have hung there in his biowires for all of eternity, staring out to the distant moons that lazily circled Alternia. As it was, his commands ran in black and white binary; efficient, irrefutable.

Flawless.

"_Give him_ the commands, you fucking shitsucker -- "

"Hey, _pissblood!"_ And some gullible novice _slapped _him, like he gave a shit about his physical surroundings anymore. It had only been perigees in the helming column, but to him it felt like sweeps and sweeps of cold, empty void -- the pain long dulling into a jagged throb behind his eyelids. 

"Pissblood! -- " Why did they keep using that slur? The troll might as well been insulting his jumpsuit -- "follow the _gogdamn_ commands!"

Right.

By reflex he fed them into his feeder, dissecting strings and strings of code into concrete simple commands -- light up the ship, power up the proper machines, turn on the dials -- mundane, listless activity that fed no one's interest. It was a command for opening up the Telescreen Ports, flickering through the correct channels, resolving pixelation errors. Maybe it'd be another live footage of an Alternian ship conquering a planet. Gog knows how much feeds they had had in the past week. He passively flicked open the screen, adjusting to its colors, sinking himself back into a world of static buzzing and sharp sensations --

What he saw on the TP made him go deathly still.

====

With methodical movements she scrubbed at the floor. Right hand went counterclockwise, getting the best of the dirt onto the rag, left held firm to the floorboards to keep her balance. Her bare knees chafed raw on the paneling. Outside, the ship swayed and groaned to the ebb and flow of waves, the sky flushing into a blood-red dusk. A few highbloods passed her by the hallways, one stooping down to kick her in the hip. The blow was painful, but she had endured worse before.

"Imperial feed goin' on here -- "

They had drones, she thought dispassionately. They had helming, they had spaceships, and yet they still forced slaves to scrub the floors pristine. An utter degradement to their bodies, the way they were reduced to less than the value of scrap metal. Even as the TP crackled to life above her head, she continued to scrub at the junction of wall and floor, stained with hazy smears that she didn't feel the urge to identify.

"They _still_ haven't killed him? Fucking cowards -- "

She paused slightly, biting her lip. 

"_Fucker looks so scared,_ look at him, _look_ at him! He's probably going to cry for his lusus!"

_I had a wiggler once,_ she thought, and it was this mindset that made her lift her chin, connect her gaze with the dusty screen

made her drop the rag in horrified surprise.

====

By now, casual pilfering was systemized and ritualized -- just as the sky turned colors, combining low and high blood colors into a soupy mess, she would already be snatching parcels of food from windowsills and carts and all the spaces in between. Once her companion (her _lover?_) had told her -- told _all_ \-- not to take from the poor, from the empty-handed, but to make your own values. She truly did try to abide by his words.

Lies and slander.

Still, she limited her pickings to the most abundant of carts, already darting into shadows long before any observer noticed the absence of one or two fruits. She felt like a ragged thief again, catching pigeons in the alleyways. There had been three periods in her life: her childhood -- lususless and harsh -- the time she had met him -- and his mother, and later they would meet another friend -- and then the time after.

_the time after_

One day, she vowed to herself, she would stand at the precipice and release all her writings, let the papers be caught in a maelstrom of wind and sorrow and raw, pulsing anger, the kind that pushed through the bloods of the oppressed. Or maybe she was being melodramatic. Only the pissants ever took upon his words, the lofty cold and cruel and completely unreachable.

"Are you trying to _look_ for someone? Who the fuck would want you anyway?" A cold, high jeer, and she was already creeping forward, peering her head around the corner, staring up at the TP that was plastered across the central plaza --

"Your fucking quadrantmate? Your pissblooded friend? Your _slave, filth-ridden_ lusus?"

_no_

He still struggled. His hands were chained in front of him, his dignity stripped down to tattered rags across his legs and torso, one of his nubby horns completely torn off and leaving behind a raw, bloody stump. His blood -- utterly brilliant, like a beacon in the sea -- dripped down lazily onto the ground. 

"Why don't you _speak up, _you little shit?" But how could he, when all that was left of his tongue and throat were gnarled, torn muscle, burnt all the way down to his lungs, half of his teeth missing? He had been so skilled with words, from mundane conversation to rousing sermons, all crackling heat and kind murmurs, and they had shattered his crutch to leave him bereaved.

"Figures," the other troll grumbled.

There was little fanfare. A martyr rose from the highest of pain, flogging and heated irons and candy red spilling across the pavement. He couldn't even have a proper ending. The troll that had been narrating had pulled out a knife and swiped at his neck, attempting to decapitate with a powerful -- if ostentatious -- blow. 

The Disciple turned her head from the sight.

When she returned her gaze, the deed was still incomplete -- the blade had been lodged into the neck, uncomfortably twisted around bone, and it would've looked almost comical if his face hadn't been contorted in a silent scream. The mess went on for a few moments. Another troll exasperatedly came up behind him and pressed a gun barrel to his head, the barrel that traveled a short ways and left his eye with nary more than a few droplets. No splash, no sound, just a single bullet pressed.

He slumped over like he had been drunk. The blood that leaked from his head was small in quantity, and in the light it looked an ordinary rust.

Surely there were trolls that had gasped at the scene, letting tears build up from behind their visions -- there were more trolls that glanced at the screen with an indifference they had long grown accustomed to. Elsewhere, three trolls closed their eyes from the sight -- two utterly slaves, one fated to die bereft -- watching their friend, their son, their lover -- their _leader_ \-- drown in his own tiny puddle of blood.


End file.
